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Talk:Custis Cawthorne
Gee, I wonder who HT had in mind with this character. TR 06:43, 26 November 2008 (UTC) :lol Jelay14 06:46, 26 November 2008 (UTC) It's very tempting to alter that picture of Ben Franklin we have and put it up in this article. TR 06:07, 20 January 2009 (UTC) :We'd have to make him thinner. Turtle Fan 15:21, 20 January 2009 (UTC) ::Indeed. TR 15:42, 20 January 2009 (UTC) :::I kept picturing him as the real Franklin throughout. :::I found it a bit irritating. If HT didn't want to use historical figures the way he usually does, he shouldn't've made a fictional character with a different name who had a 1:1 correspondence to a historical figure in every major and minor way except BMI. At least Cawthorne was the only one; the rest of the characters didn't seem to be bending over backwards to resemble their counterparts from OTL. Actually most of them didn't have close counterparts. Turtle Fan 18:39, 20 January 2009 (UTC) ::::Fenner reminded me physically of Jefferson, but his personality was a little closer to John Adams. :::::And his position was analogous to John Hancock's. An amalgamation of figures doesn't bother me so much. Turtle Fan 20:02, 20 January 2009 (UTC) ::::Uncle Bobby's ferocious devotion to the cause looked a little Sam Adams, although Sam was hardly the only ferocious devotee, so I might be reading too much in to that. :::::Passionate support of the cause isn't so unusual, and even if it were, that's only one trait in common. My problem with Cawthorne is that he had Franklin's personality and all of Franklin's careers and Franklin's reputation and Franklin's opinions and inclinations on all sorts of matters political, religious, and scientific, and even a bunch of details like inventing the bifocals and having a son who was a loyalist governor. Everything but the appearance, and even there, VR talked about how, when talking to Cawthorne, you kept being surprised that he didn't look like Franklin--though not in so many words, of course. Turtle Fan 20:02, 20 January 2009 (UTC) ::::I could draw no line from any of the other characters to OTL counterparts. TR 18:48, 20 January 2009 (UTC) In a guilty moment of not reading for class, I sat down in an afternoon and read U.S. of Atlantis, and dear God, a skinny Franklin is the least creative stretch EVER. Gah. I agree with you both about the blending of other characters, but dearest God. Skinny Franklin is all I'm calling Custis from now on. His loyalist son even had the SAME first name. GAH! Alright, back to reading ever more Cecil Rhodes. Huzzah Elefuntboy 03:36, 15 February 2009 (UTC) ::Hey Elefunt! ::Not sure if it's lack of creativity so much as trying to have the cake and eat it, too. On the one hand, HT might have wanted to write something about Franklin, but on the other, he felt he should respond to his critics who call him on having historicals. TR 04:10, 15 February 2009 (UTC) :::That's exactly what had me so annoyed. It's the same thing that's kept me from reading ItPoME--Either talk about Waldheim and Blair, or don't! I've never been bothered by the historicals so I wouldn't've minded Franklin's appearance at all; but if HT didn't want to go down that road, then by God he shouldn't have. Turtle Fan 05:50, 15 February 2009 (UTC) :::: Hey guys! Yeah, I'd not have minded the people, I'd just have liked them to either be the historical characters or somewhat different. Daniel MacArthur and Ophelia Clemens were a bit irritating as well. Elefuntboy 14:47, 15 February 2009 (UTC) :One afternoon, huh? I mean, it's neither the longest nor the densest book in the world, but that's still a lot of reading in a short period. :: You'd be surprised what you could do when you're trying not to read dense historiographical theory :) Elefuntboy 14:47, 15 February 2009 (UTC) :::Yeah, I remember those days. Any distraction will do. Turtle Fan 16:08, 15 February 2009 (UTC) :Actually, I'm getting a little nostalgic about the way I read the book myself right now: on a lot of forty-minute subway rides right before Christmas. :Speaking of Christmas, I've been reading an 800+ page book about Mary Queen of Scots since either New Year's or the day after. Not exclusively--I took a bit of a break to throw in a few shorter books because I realized that if I didn't I'd never get around to them. But I'm nowhere near the end--I don't think I've even broken 400 yet. Very discouraging. I used to pound through long books. I once read Gone With the Wind in about a month, with some help from about four days of being really sick. :Now as for USA (and I'm all over the map on this one, huh?) was anyone else disappointed by the point where VR is like "Oh yeah, the form our government will take! I guess they decided that."? There was so very much drama in the writing and ratifying of the US Constitution OTL, and its Atlantis counterpart got one sentence! It was even more shoddily treated than the roots of the colonists' discontent, which were not explored beyond a few very incidental mentions of discontent with trade policy. Why did HT have to leave all the non-combat stuff so unexplored? The book wasn't that long, there was room enough to get into it a little. Turtle Fan 04:03, 15 February 2009 (UTC) :::Is that the one by Margaret George? Because it's quite good. Elefuntboy 14:47, 15 February 2009 (UTC) ::::Yep. Turtle Fan 16:08, 15 February 2009 (UTC) ::The abrupt quality of all of that is consistent with the Atlantean character as HT has presented it to us. The get together, they get shit done, and they go home. Kind of like that cell phone commercial, where firefighters run the government. :::I like the one where delivery men run the high school. I wish it were that easy to keep order in those places, or that the apparatus for doing so were that organized. :::The firemen one, every time I watch it I find myself bothered by how over-simplistic they make it look. Running governments is a difficult undertaking. You can't promise everything that sounds good, implement it immediately, and have done with it. Not without a deficit that's out of this world, and probably not with one, either. :::But VR did mention that whatever passed for a constitutional convention among the Atlanteans had been going back and forth over the matter for some time. :::And Atlanteans have dithered before--It took the pirates all day to choose their admiral. Turtle Fan 05:50, 15 February 2009 (UTC) ::Which isn't to say it wouldn't have been nice to see. TR 04:10, 15 February 2009 (UTC)